


Dave: perform a hat trick.

by saffronHeliotrope



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Caliginous Romance | Kismesis, Flushed Romance | Matesprits, M/M, Post-Sburb/Sgrub, Species Swap, Xenophilia, and a little bit of body dysphoria, background Karkat/Eridan, background Rose/Jade, go get it Dave, if you're sensitive to that, nudity is a moirails thing, oh quadrants how do they work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-27
Updated: 2017-03-01
Packaged: 2018-09-27 05:20:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9974675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saffronHeliotrope/pseuds/saffronHeliotrope
Summary: “Hang on, hang on, hang on,” he pants out. There’s an adorable red flush high on his cheeks. “What the hell is going on? What’s — what’s —"“What’s this?” you say, giving him a little nudge with your hip. His brows crease adorably but he still doesn’t pull away. “Congrats, you’re the owner of a shiny new dingdong! Wanna take it out for a test run?”You’d never in a million, billion years expect him to say yes. But he bites his lip and doesn’t say no.





	1. hearts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CurlicueCal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CurlicueCal/gifts).



> Once upon a time a million billion years ago, CurlicueCal gave me a prompt for (what was supposed to be) a 500-word mini-fic: "davekat or eridave species swap? how do aliens work oh no." And that spawned a thing that spawned two other things, and those three things became this fic. It's been sitting in my WIPs file for fully three years waiting for me to smooth the disjointed bits together (heh) which I have now done (heh heh.) CC, thank you for the prompt -- I loved writing this back then and I've loved coming back to it now.

Predictably, everyone spends the first hour freaking out. And then, when you all realize that you’re fine, you’re healthy and safe and whole, and the reset universe is flashing you a big no-backsies sign, you give a collective shrug and start exploring your brave new world.

That’s when the sloppy makeouts start.

It doesn’t take Karkat long to corner you in a little meadow not far from the beach. You were looking for some privacy because you think maybe you need to take a piss but you’re not quite sure how, and you don’t want anyone watching — not troll-John, not troll-Dirk, certainly not inexplicably-hot-human-girl Terezi — while you try to work that particular little puzzle out. You’ve just started fumbling with your belt — fingers with claws, what the fuck — when someone crashes through the underbrush behind you.

He doesn’t look all that different, really, with dusky brown skin and a glossy inky rat’s-nest of hair; you could almost forget to miss his little horn nubbins. And you, you’re too busy trying to be casual about figuring out how to get your hands in your pockets without tearing giant fucking rents in your jeans when all of a sudden he’s got you pinned against a tree, and those big dark eyes are glaring at you from an inch away.

“Whassup, Karks?” Yeah, you need to get these fangs figured out right quick.

“How the fuck do you deal with it?” he grits out, fingers clenching spastically at your upper arms. “Being human. Is this what it’s supposed to be like?”

“Uh, unexplained anger and uncontrollable spasms in the extremities? Nope, buddy, that’s just y—”

“I mean these _feelings!”_ he barks. “Everyone — and I mean _everyone_ — is suddenly stupidly attractive! I never thought Equius was sexy before, did I? And just now I walked past that hulking sweaty douchebag and thought _wow, yes_.” He makes a noise of utter disgust. “Feferi? I swear to god I’ve never looked at her twice in my life and I found myself fantasizing about tripping and falling and landing with my face in her cleavage! And Sollux, stupid skinny asshole, when did he get hot? Why am I attracted to _everyone,_ even members of other species? What the fuck is wrong with me _?_ ”

You stare at him a minute, and then you burst out laughing while he glares. “It’s called being a teenaged boy, dude,” you say.

“It sucks,” he says ardently, scowling. “And I don’t know what to _do_ about it.”

Later you’ll look back and wonder what exactly made you do it, whether it was the unhappy little note of confusion under his voice or the artless pout of his incongruously soft-looking mouth. Or just some fucked-up neuron chain firing off in your new troll brain saying _go for it_. In any case, you find yourself murmuring, “Well, here’s a start,” and you lean forward and suck his lower lip into your mouth.

He honest-to-god startles, body going rigid where you’ve caught him by the hips. Then you push your tongue carefully past your new fangs and drag deliberate and slow against the seam of his plush lips, that tantalizing hint of warmth and softness. All at once he shivers a little and opens for you, a little naked noise of surrender in his throat.

Well, fuck. Not like this day needed to get any more interesting.

You certainly didn’t think beyond one kiss, but now you’ve got Karkat warm and pliant in your arms, pressing all eager against you. You sink back a little against the tree and he follows you, unselfconscious, sweet as anything. You manage the wherewithal to think _claws_ before running your hands carefully around his sides and up his back, palms flat, and it’s hardly anything but he shudders and melts against you.

 _So responsive_ , you think, but then he shoves his hands up under your shirt, all warm and grabby, and the breath goes out of you a little as his palms drag over your skin. You break away from his mouth with a little grunt and plant your lips below his ear, his dark messy curls brushing your nose, and you inhale the earthy animal _human_ scent of him. It’s familiar to your memory but foreign to your troll senses, and your brain spins, disoriented. So you go in for more, harder, sharp sucking kisses down his throat. He goes _aahhh_ , softly; bumps against you with his whole body, clumsy like he’s drunk with it.

You go with it, roll with it, let yourself fall into the rhythm of it. Trading kisses, licking past each other’s teeth. He makes little helpless noises and it’s suddenly your most important sidequest to coax out as many of those little grunts and murmurs as you possibly can. In fact, you’re focused enough on the taste of his mouth and the smell of his skin and the soft fragile skin under his jaw that you can almost ignore the squirmy damp feeling starting to grow in your pants region. _Almost._

But that? That’s definitely a boner he’s got pushed up against your hip.

Right fucking _on._  

You let your hands slide down to his stupidly plush little rump and give him the nice old two-handed squeeze-and-pull-closer maneuver. His hard-on grinds up nice and friendly in the hollow of your hip.

He shudders and shoves at your shoulders, leaning back in your arms but not pushing away with his hips, interestingly enough. “Hang on, hang on, hang on,” he pants out. There’s an adorable red flush high on his cheeks. “What the hell is going on? What’s — what’s —“

“What’s this?” you say, giving him a little nudge with your hip. His brows crease adorably but he still doesn’t pull away. “Congrats, you’re the owner of a shiny new dingdong! Wanna take it out for a test run?”

You’d never in a million, billion years expect him to say yes. But he bites his lip and doesn’t say no.

“How does it work?” he asks quietly.

It takes every single goddamn ounce of strength and every moment of disciplined poker-face practice you've ever had, but you don't break into a giant fucking grin. Instead you say, “You want a hands-on demo, or you wanna go DIY-style with guided instructions from an expert onlooker?”

“Shut up. Just… just tell me what to do.”

Ok, this time a tiny fraction of the grin slips through. “Unzip, babes, and behold the glory.”

He glares at you, then scowls a little at his fingertips before unzipping his gray jeans. You can’t really see what he’s doing, just the top of his messy head, but you sure like the little hitch in his breath when he reaches into his pants.

“Now what? It’s just sitting there.”

“As opposed to? Never mind, don’t answer that. Just touch it, dude.”

His arm moves and you manfully manage not to move for a better look. But he makes a frustrated little noise and suddenly steps back and works his pants and underwear halfway down his legs, then drops to his knees.

“Get down here and be helpful, would you?” he barks at you. And who are you to argue with that. You crouch down just in time for a front-row seat as he grits his teeth, closes his eyes, and goes at it with both hands.

“Wait — Jesus Christ — stop that!” He’s touching himself all wrong, eyes screwed up in what looks like pain, squeezing his dick too hard, wrist tilted at an angle like he wants to bend and twist it, while his other hand keeps going searching for something and instead recoils from the soft dangling sac of his balls. He lets out a little sob of frustration, and something like pain blooms in your chest, pain that somehow melts your heart and sets the heavy weight on your head itching into your skull and makes you squirm in your pants a little. It’s fucking confusing and you can’t deal with it so instead you grab his wrists and drag his hands away from his poor abused junk.

“Let me do this, willya?” You don’t like the way your voice has gone throaty and rough, but he blinks up at you and nods curtly.

Your hands are _gray_ and you have _claws_ but at least the joints and tendons seem to work the way they should, and the skin on your palms is reasonably soft, and when you curl your hand around his dick and stroke him lightly he goes shudderingly still. You tighten your grip and stroke again, teasing the foreskin down from the damp flushed head. His cock is gorgeous, short and thick and dusky-dark like the rest of him. A drop of pre-come beads in his slit, and you resist the urge to lean down and lick it up. You’re still not too sure of your teeth and alien blowjobs might be too much even for you to handle at the moment; best leave the varsity-level mackings for later (if there’s a later _you hope there’ll be a later.)_

Then Karkat moans softly and you’re reminded of the issue, well, at hand.

The angle is awkward so you scootch closer and work him over like you would yourself, firm grip, not too fast, occasional twist of the wrist over the head. He tenses up, grabs your wrist, and you immediately loosen up, move to pull away.

“Don’t stop,” he rasps, and he sounds scared, wrecked.

 _Fuck_. You tug him into your lap so his back is to your chest, get back to work. He hangs onto your arm like a lifeline. “I’ve got you, I’m not gonna stop, babe,” you growl in his ear, and your voice is dropping by octaves, harmonics in the bass that you’ve got no control over. Your heart is going to burst into flames and perform a magnificent swan dive into the churning pool of squirmy heat growing in your pants region. What the fuck is this pain around your heart and why does the rest of your body think it’s so sexy, why.

There’s a little bottle you used to carry in your sylladex that would be extremely useful right now, if you still had it; instead you spit into your hand, and hey, it turns out that troll spit is nicely viscous and slick. Karkat sobs and arches against you, cock slipping hot and heavy through your fingers. You trap him against you with your other hand flat across his straining belly. His ass grinds against your crotch, and there’s definitely something happening there, something swelling and growing sensitive, you need something, you don’t know what you need—

And then he stretches and reaches back with both hands and catches you by the _horns_ , fuck, you have _horns,_ and the solid grip of his hands vibrates into your skull and down your spine, and you’re suddenly so surrounded by the feel of him that it’s like the rest of your senses shut down a little — just the touch of his skin, the warmth and pressure and closeness of him, that’s all you’ve got. And he’s putty in your hands, pistoning into your fist fast and desperate, all unselfconscious and uncontrolled. Part of you wants to tell him to slow down, stretch it out, let it build, but the rest of you loves his desperation and clumsiness, the vulnerability trembling in his frame.

He goes rigid in your arms, muscles locking up, hips losing their rhythm, and his shout rings through the little clearing as he comes over your fingers, onto his stomach. You moan helplessly into his ear and stroke him through it, heart racing, until he slumps in your lap, shaky and panting. His hands slip from your horns.

You feel bereft, needy, empty. You _ache_. But you hold him close, lips pressed to his temple, hand cupping his sticky softening cock, letting him get his bearings, and he quiets in your arms.

And then the thing in your pants makes a desperate attempt at friction against the inside of your jeans, and you _howl_.

Karkat must feel it squirm against him, because he sits up and turns, looking first down at your lap, and then up at your face.

You’re blushing like crazy, you know it. You want to cover yourself with words; you want to tease him, make shitty deadpan jokes, sarcastic lewd come-ons about tentacle dicks. But you’re cracked wide open. You can’t help shifting, pressing down against that emptiness, and what comes out instead is distressingly close to a whimper: “Fuck, Karkat, _help me._ ”

His eyes are so big and dark, you could drown in them. He leans forward and kisses you, warm and soft.

“All right, shit, just calm down. You’re going to be okay,” he says, and undoes your fly, but he’s wrong, you’re not okay, you’re going to burn up and explode because you don’t know what’s going on in your chest or in your skull or in your pants —

He slips his hand into your boxers, tugging your clothes down your hips a little, and then an honest-to-god tentacle slithers out of your pants, smearing thin reddish goop across your stomach. It’s so fucking _weird_ that all you can do is stare at it in disbelief. Then it twists fretfully against itself, and _shit_ , yes, that thing is wired up to your nervous system, holy fuck.

“Okay,” you say, breathing carefully.

Karkat lays his hand on your hip, just a few inches from the thing. “Do you want me to—”

“Yes, just, fuck. Do it.”

He takes a deep breath and if you weren’t a microsecond away from losing it utterly, you would die laughing at his little serious face. Then his hand is on you, firm and warm, and muscles you never even imagined you might have start to _do things_ , and you watch in fascinated horror while it — your _bulge_ — twines around his fingers and squeezes.

Then he squeezes back, and your brain nearly explodes.

And at that precise moment there’s a crashing in the underbrush, and an uncertain voice says “Kar?” and there’s Eridan standing five feet away with hunger and confusion writ large all over his face.

“For fuck’s sake,” mutters Karkat under his breath. “I’m kind of in the middle of something,” he says aloud and is immediately awarded the biggest-understatement-of-the-new-universe award, and the crowd goes wild.

“I didn’t know who else to come to,” says Eridan miserably.

When Karkat shifts a bit off your lap and Eridan gets a look at you clear, he blushes all over his face but doesn’t look away. Through the fog of pheromones and frustration and a weird, twisting anger, you realize that goddamn, he’s pretty — tall and willowy where Karkat is stocky and solid, with the kind of face that would look even better with your hand pushing it down into a pillow.

And where the everloving fuck did that thought come from, Jesus Christ.

Karkat looks helplessly at you. You groan and let your head drop back. Do trolls get blue balls? You fervently hope not.

“Yeah, whatever,” you say. “The spank doctor is in. Let’s see what you’ve got.”

Eridan blinks at you. “Get over here, you ridiculous wiggler,” says Karkat.

You sure hope that some of the others are working on figuring out things like food and shelter, because if you’re going to have to help out every horny newly-human kid in this universe, it’s going to take a while.

And then while Eridan is nervously picking his way closer and dropping to kneel beside you, Karkat turns and pins you with a stare. “I’m not done with you yet,” he says low enough for only you to hear. And there’s that bright sweet ache again, and suddenly your new troll brain supplies you with the word _flushed_ , the word _pity._

A slow smile spreads across your face. Whatever else happens in this new world, you know you’re not going to be bored, and it looks increasingly like you’re not going to be lonely.

 


	2. spades

How you ended up on your hands and knees over Eridan’s slender prone form with your pants off, you can’t really remember. Most of your brain is currently taken up by the fact that your brand new bulge is currently wrapped around his very erect dick, and squeezing like it’s a cuddly little plush toy.

That, or your bulge is an enthusiastic boa constrictor and his dick is dinner. You’re not sure which metaphor you like better, and you don’t get a chance to decide, because you grind your hips against him a little and he bares his teeth and straight-up _snarls_ at you.

Or he tries, anyway. In his human throat, it comes out sounding about as threatening as a labrador puppy. Even Eridan looks abashed at the ridiculousness of it. You burst out laughing.

“Is that all you’ve got now, fins?” you crow over him, feeling giddy with a buzzing spiteful eagerness. “Or should I call you ex-fins?” You bow your head swiftly and nip the pink shell of his ear between your teeth. “How about you try this on for size?” And you set your teeth and let out the sound that’s been building inside you, the growl-rattle-hum that starts somewhere deep in your chest and buzzes all the way out to your fingertips.

Eridan’s eyes go wide.

“Holy shit,” says Karkat where he kneels beside you.

“W-wow, Dave, I never knew you cared,” says Eridan.

“I don’t,” you say. “The sooner we get your whiny ass finished and on your merry way, the better.”

“Then you’re sendin’ me some pretty seriously mixed messages,” Eridan says.

“The fuck? No, I—”

“That was a blackrom growl, dumbass,” says Karkat. “Clear as night. Or, I guess, day. I heard it too.”

“No. Hell no. You’re not bringing quadrants into this, not over my freaky alien dead body. This, what I’m doing right here? This is a public service. This is a personal _favor_. This is _not_ romance, black or red or fluorescent green with purple stripes — this is me, out of the goodness of my own heart, helping out a whiny annoying douchecanoe who can’t figure out his own dick because—”

“That’s what you may think,” says Eridan, and despite the high bright color on his face there’s a note of smugness in his voice that makes you want to rub a fistful of dirt in his hair and maybe in his mouth. “But you’re pretty clearly indicatin’ otherwise.” And he pushes up against you through the grip of your bulge, and the involuntary corresponding squeeze of your muscles makes you hiss through your fangs.

“No, fuck you, and no,” you grit out on a rising tide of irritation, even while your wiggly new troll dick is telegraphing _yes yes yes_ signals all over your brain. You want to chew the smirk right off his smarmy face, so you attack him mouth-first, burying his sounds of protest while you grind your hips over his.

Then there are hands in your hair, warm fingers gripping the bases of your horns. “Easy, easy,” says Karkat, and no, no fair, why does everything go melty-soft at the touch of his hand, you were _enjoying_ the crush of Eridan’s mouth, the blaze of anger all down your spine—

Eridan must sense your moment of weakness because in a second he’s got you toppled on your back, half-tangled in Karkat’s lap. For such a scrawny fucker he’s actually really strong, and there’s something in your gut that leaps at the thought.

But then he’s bending your legs back and you’re spread wide open, too far open, vulnerable and off-balance, and he’s kneeling between your legs with his stiff prick way too close to the tender parts of you that you haven’t begun to figure out yet. You kick out in anger and a little disorienting bit of panic, dislodging him and knocking him to the dirt, and you scramble back into Karkat’s arms, panting.

Eridan sits up. “What the everlovin’ fuck was that?”

You struggle to get yourself under control. You can’t look at Karkat, though his soothing hands are helping. He mercifully doesn’t ask you if you are okay.

You have lost your cool way too many times already today, and no, you are most definitely _not okay._

“Eridan, stop it,” says Karkat firmly.

“Aww, Kar, why? We were gettin’ a good thing goin’ there—”

“Just slow the hell down, asshole, or I swear I’ll pap you myself,” Karkat says. “It’s been a weird fucking day for everybody.”

Eridan glares at you. Karkat says softly, “Do you want to stop?”

You’re embarrassed as shit and thrown way the hell off your game, but both of them still smell so fucking good and everything south of your waist is still squirmy-sensitive and also on fire. And the thought of letting Eridan get the better of you in this makes you want to explode in incandescent rage. You exhale hard in the circle of Karkat’s arms, say, “Hell no,” and kiss him.

He kisses you back, long and sweet and deep. _You’re fine, you’re safe,_ say his hands, his lips, the warmth and solidity of him, and your next exhale comes out as a shaky chirr from somewhere low in your throat.

Eridan whines from nearby, reedy and petulant, and you shoot him a glare and a middle finger. “You had your turn, asswipe,” you tell him, and Karkat chuckles and tugs you back in to kiss you again. The taste of him is driving you out of your mind, and the softness of his mouth, and the way he touches you so carefully.

Eridan comes up behind you, and even lost in Karkat’s mouth you are hyper-sensitive to where he is, what he’s doing. It’s like you’re listening with your skin. When Eridan touches your shoulder, then kisses the nape of your neck, you arch a little into his touch. His hands glide down your back, around your sides — your ribcage was never this sensitive before, you swear — and then without warning he bites you, hard and purposeful, right at the juncture of neck and shoulder.

It’s like a lightning bolt straight to your dick — or whatever you’ve got now instead of a dick. You break away from Karkat with a gasp. “Okay, that’s it,” you snarl, and launch yourself at Eridan, bearing him down to the ground. He wriggles under you but he’s no match for your new troll strength, not when he’s been dumb enough to let you put him on his back. You hold him down with hands clamped around his forearms and his struggles fill your gut with a sick churning excitement. “I’ve had enough out of you,” you say, and pay him back, burying your teeth in his shoulder.

He roars, bucking against you. You pull back and lick at the dark red circle your teeth made. “Holy _fuck_ , Dave, that fuckin’ hurt!” he cries.

“Then maybe you shouldn’t have screwed with a brand new troll,” you tell him, leaning hard on his arms for emphasis. “Don’t know my own strength yet and all. And here you are, just a poor little fragile pink alien. Big scary monster’s going to eat you up.”

He’s panting now, pushing up against your body wherever he can reach. You look at his throat, considering. It’s long and elegant and there are beads of sweat on his delicate skin and when he arches back, baring it to you, he might as well be handing you a letterpressed invitation. You plant your lips on the side of his neck and suck carefully, then harder.

He howls, but when you pull back to inspect the gorgeous bruise you put on him, his eyes are glazed with lust. You bite his full lower lip for good measure and then take his mouth like you’re getting away with something, like looting, like plundering.

Somewhere in there your bulge got all tangled with his dick again, and when it squeezes involuntarily, he moans. “That’s right, let me hear you,” you say, grinning and a little out of breath. You get both of his wrists in one hand and drag the other down his body, stopping to flick at his pink nipples.

He twists in your grip, arching his back. “W-what the fuck was that?”

You pinch his nipple, rubbing between finger and thumb. “Erogenous zones you never knew existed. Congrats, bro, you’re a mammal now.”

“That’s fuckin’ gross,” says Eridan, but from the way he presses into your touch, the way he cranes his neck to get a look at your fingers on his skin, you think maybe the ex-troll protests too much.

You lean down and lick him there, then suck the soft skin into your mouth, flickering your tongue over the pebbled tip. You release him with a _pop_ , and he whines.

“Oh my god,” says Karkat, close beside you, a throb in his voice. You glance at him. He’s flushed dark all over his face, watching your hands, and he’s got one hand curled around his dick, stroking carefully. With the other hand he plucks at his own chest. He sees you looking and averts his eyes quickly, pulling his hands away.

“Don’t stop,” you croon at him. “Jesus, babe, don’t stop if it feels good.”

The hesitation in his hands makes you ache sharp and bright, but he goes back to touching himself, softly like he’s afraid of damaging something. “Why the fuck is it happening again?” he asks like he’s in pain. “Didn’t we just do this?”

You huff out a laugh. “Refractory periods,” you say. “Again, see under teenaged human. It’s perfectly normal.” Karkat’s distressed scowl is the sweetest thing you’ve ever seen — you want to kiss it off his face, you want to push his hands away and lay him out and show him everything you’ve ever learned about making a human body feel good.

Then Eridan sobs and writhes under you again and your brain is wholly consumed by the importance of how your bulge feels sliding over his skin, wrapped around his dick and trapped between your stomachs. You squeeze and grind against him, and he ruts up mindlessly against you. The pressure and slide of him — you’re on the edge of something, chasing something more, something deeper, but you can’t figure out where it is — you let go of his arms, push his knees back so he’s bent and spread open under you, and you slide higher on his body, pushing blindly forward—

_There_. Your vision nearly shorts out. That spot there, behind your bulge, wet and soft and aching with need, and you grind it against the base of his cock while your bulge hangs on to him for dear life. Even as you do it again and moan with the feeling of it, you know it’s not going to be enough — it’s the right idea, but you don’t know what to do with it, don’t know how to reach it.

You slip a hand between your bodies and wrap your hand around your bulge, around Eridan’s dick, and that feels good, that feels great, all slick and slippery. You squeeze, stroke like your hand knows how, and _yes,_ yes, fuck, no, it’s good but it’s not right—

And then Eridan arches and shouts and convulses under you, and he shoots his load in white stripes across his own stomach.

“Already?” you pant out. You could scream with frustration, you could wring his neck. He collapses boneless under you, puffing and laughing and shuddering with aftershocks. Your bulge twists on itself and you snarl at him with all your teeth. “Nice endurance there, you hateful douche — you’d better not let anybody within ten feet of that horrible little meatstick, you might find yourself shooting off in your damn pants if somebody looks at you wrong—”

And then Karkat is winding his arms around you. “Come here, you utter wreck,” he says close to your ear, and he pulls you backward into his lap. You clutch desperately at him, and when his hand closes around the base of your bulge you want to weep with relief.

“Yes, oh god yes, somebody who’s not an idiot, praise little baby Jesus and all his pretty angels,” you babble while your bulge winds itself all around Karkat’s fingers. “Competence. That’s what we’ve been missing thus far during today’s little adventure — somebody who knows what the hell they’re doing, unlike Mr. Hair Trigger over here—”

“Hey, fuck you,” says Eridan with a scowl.

“Yeah, well, you had your chance at that already, didn’t you,” you say, a little breathless, and Karkat smothers a laugh against the back of your shoulder.

“Shut up,” says Eridan, blushing splotchy red all over his ridiculous transparent face.

“Shut up, both of you,” says Karkat, and then he gives you a squeeze and twist, and you moan like a porn star trying to make rent. You arch back against him and your right horn connects solidly with something hard. He mutters “Ow, fuck.”

“Sorry, dude,” you gasp out, and he sort of half-turns you so you won’t brain him with your new headgear. In the process he gets a hand around the base of your horn while the other is still squeezing your bulge. All at once it’s like the intensity cranks way up and you find yourself clinging to him, muscles tensed up all over your body.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay,” he says, but you are about half a breath from flipping your shit like you’re troll Bobby Flay and tonight’s special is shit pancakes with manure syrup, and you’ve got a whole kitchen full of sous chefs with spatulas galore, ready to start flipping on your command. And then Karkat drags his hand up your belly so that the slender tip of your bulge runs between your skin and his fingers, and you make a noise that sounds like you’ve been stepped on.

Eridan snorts, and you’d totally work up the brain to smack him down but you’re too busy pushing into Karkat’s hands with your hips trying to find some relief for the desperate ache between your legs. You reach for something down there, you’re not sure what, and you manage to score bright lines of pain across the tender skin with your new claws. You hiss and curse. “Claws! Why the fuck do I have claws?”

Karkat yanks your hand away by the wrist. “Be careful, dipshit,” he says, and then the hand that’s not trapping your bulge is on your inner thigh, warm and sure and so very close to the place that is radiating need like a goddamn beacon. You think you’ll die if he touches you there and you’re absolutely certain you’ll die if he doesn’t.

And then his hand is on you, softly cupped over the place where your nuts should be, the place that’s just a giant empty question mark in your brain, and it’s squirmy and horrible and absolutely filthy sopping wet, and your legs smack together so fast you’re surprised there’s not a sonic boom. Karkat yanks his hand back. You’re panting, you’re completely out of control.

Eridan cackles. “Shut it, bulgewaffle,” says Karkat angrily by your ear. “Give him a minute. He’s never had a nook before.”

“And if it’s all right by you can we just use our imaginations and pretend I don’t have one now?” you grit out. “Let’s just get back to the bulge business, yeah? Wiggly troll boner, sounds good to me, so let’s just focus on that, huh?”

Eridan huffs out a laugh. “Sure, except you’re gonna have a lot more trouble gettin’ off, and it’s not gonna feel nearly as good, but yeah, whatever you say.”

“Go sit on a thumbtack and spin,” you tell Eridan while Karkat glares. He’s still stroking your bulge lightly, and the shocks of sensation run down to the root of you. “Is that — is that true?” you ask Karkat quietly.

He looks pained. “Sort of, yeah.”

“Fuck,” you say, then, “fuck,” again. Then you heave a deep breath. You’re cool. You can roll with this. You got through the goddamn game, from time loop limbo and nakodile soup and smelly adolescent angst psycho-clown meteor hell all the way through the final battle and now here you are, and after all that you are not going to let one freaky new alien pussy beat you. This is not the mountain you die on. It feels cowardly and small-minded and somehow disrespectful of your Bro.

_You’d have loved this, you fuckin’ weirdo,_ you think, and you screw your eyes shut and say, “Go away, fishface,” and then, being very, very mindful of your claws, you draw your fingertips down around and under your bulge and you touch what’s underneath.

Smooth, warm flesh: rippled, soft, and wet. It’s sensitive enough that your leg twitches as soon as you touch yourself. But you persevere; you are the Dr. Livingstone of your own alien junk. There’s a vertical slit which seems to be where most of the ooze is coming from — though your bulge is pretty fucking drippy too — and the flesh around it is puffy and slick. You press your fingertips to the slit and muscles deep inside you that you have no control over just fucking clench without your say-so. That’s goddamn weird. But your finger brushes over the little juncture between the top of the slit and the base of your bulge, and you groan and push the heel of your hand there. It aches in the best possible way.

“Ok, Karks, tell me what I’m doing here,” you demand.

Karkat has to clear his throat before he can talk, and his voice is still pretty gruff. “That’s, um. That’s probably your globes you’re feeling. They’re up between your nook and your sheath and they get swollen when you’ve got, when you’ve got genetic material you’re ready to, uh. Expel.”

“And let me just guess,” you say, grinding a little against your own hand, “I can’t do any expelling without somebody’s tentacle dick all over my globes like white on rice.”

“Ideally, yeah. Though fingers will do in a pinch.”

“And I’m sure as shit not going up there with my brand new murder-talons,” you say, gradually getting used to the feeling of your own fingertips stroking over that soft wet skin. Your heart is going a mile a minute. “So congratulations, buddy, you’ve been nominated for the job. Don’t worry if you don’t have a speech prepared.”

Eridan says helpfully, “I can do it, if you want.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? But that’s the biggest, flashiest _NO_ that anybody has ever seen.”

“Aww, why not?”

“Because I don’t trust you any farther than I can throw you,” you say, “and given that you’re a 98-pound weakling of a human, that’s probably, I dunno, eight feet or so? Still not far enough to let you go jamming your fingers up my special place. Karkles, you’re up.”

Karkat heaves a breath and lets it out carefully. “Ok,” he says. “Just don’t freak out on me, ok?”

“I reserve the right to do as much freaking out as I damn well please,” you say, then glance up at him. He’s looking down at you with his thoughtful frowny I’m-being-a-good-leader I’m-taking-one-for-the-team face, and your heart more or less melts into a puddle of goo. He’s taking this so, so seriously.

“I’m good,” you say quietly. “Let’s do it.”

He leans down to kiss you, soft little touches of his lips at first, but then deeper, his tongue sliding against yours, until he fills your awareness, until your bulge is twisting against his fingers and you can feel your pulse in the deep throbby places where your horns sprout from your skull. And then he strokes over your hand and between your fingers, over your your _your nook_ and you whimper into his mouth and arch up into his touch.

He takes a maddeningly long time just running his fingertips up and down the slit, touching you so softly you think you’re going to burn up and die. You’re not kissing him anymore, just panting helplessly against his lips, and your bulge gives a twist and you lift your hips and say “Kar _kat_!” with your voice breaking on his name.

He makes a low throaty sound that your troll brain parses as _almost_ something it recognizes, and then he pushes a fingertip in, _inside you,_ and everything you have clenches down on him.

“It’s ok, it’s ok,” you’re babbling. “It’s good. Keep going.”

He keeps petting your bulge, and you cling to his arm so hard you’re probably going to give him a whole technicolor sleeve of bruises, but the majority of your brain is focused on how his finger slides into you, slippery-wet. He doesn’t pump in and out of you like you might have tried with a human girl if you’d ever gotten the chance. He just starts to rub circles with his fingers crooked toward the front. It’s close to what you need, so close, and you shift a little and grind down against him, forcing his finger in farther. His fingertip brushes over something that lights up inside you like a little star.

“There,” you gasp. “Oh, fuck, there.”

“Found it,” says Eridan smugly.

Karkat pushes a second finger in alongside the first, and it’s just the littlest bit of stretch, just enough of an _intrusion_ that your heartbeat spikes and you make a strained little noise. But it’s also more substance, more of those little circles farther in, and you squirm down against him until his palm is pressed flat and squelching against the base of your bulge. His fingers are working high and deep inside you against that spot that feels like the most important spot in the world. You feel a heaviness, deep and sweet and growing ever more urgent, low in your belly.

“Karkat,” you murmur, though there’s nothing else you meant to add.

“Does it feel good?” he asks softly.

You answer with a sound you can’t control, a whine from the base of your throat. He laughs a little and says, “That’s a yes.”

His fingers are gentle and relentless. You can’t think, you can’t do anything, and your body is curling up instinctively, all your muscles tensing. “Oh _fuck_ — I — I can’t —” you say, and you have to move; you scramble to your hands and knees and he moves smoothly with you until he’s curled against your back, kneeling behind and over you with his arms around you, one hand on your bulge and the other still working up your nook. You can feel his hard-on glancing against your skin and you grind back against him until his cock is nestled between your asscheeks, pressing and sliding against parts of you that you never knew could be so sensitive. When you arch back against him again, he grunts low and surprised and rolls his hips against you.

Your face feels like you’re burning up. Desperate and blind, you shove against Karkat, and he nearly loses his balance. When he settles back in behind you his dick slips right between your thighs where your skin is slick and slippery. You seize up at the feeling of him there, hot and thick, rubbing up against the tender skin, the opening of you —

“Not inside,” you choke out, clamping your legs instinctively around him.

“I won’t, I won’t, I swear,” he babbles, then, “Oh, fuck, _Dave,_ ” with his lips against the center of your back, his breath hot against you, sweaty and close. You must be breaking his wrist, the way his hand is twisted up into you, but then his fingers twitch against that spot again and your mind spirals away into the fever-glitter of his touch.

You squeeze your legs together, pressing his hand up against the base of your bulge, and when you curl forward and back again his cock slides hot and slippery through that tight space. He moans, wordless and low, then says, “Is -- is this ok?” All your words are gone. For an answer you press back, and he tips forward, and you set up a rhythm between you, jerky and desperate and so close, so close —

— and if the angle changed just a little the heavy blunt head of him could actually slip inside the swollen-wet lips of your nook where his fingers are still curled deep inside you, and you close your eyes while something blossoms new and terrifying in your mind, the possibility of being _penetrated_ , the thought of something thick and foreign and solid pressing you open and holding you there —

— and the idea makes everything new and tender and alien in you just fucking _incinerate._

Your elbows give way and you drop to your forearms with a rattle and chirr that rips from somewhere behind your breastbone. You’re so close, so fucking close, skating the edge, reaching with every fiber of your body.

And there’s one hand around the base of your left horn and a fist in your hair, and Eridan yanks your head up so that your back bends like a bow. The prickle of pain shivers in a sparking crescent from your skull down your spine, and something in you releases, unfurls, detonates under the relentless touch of Karkat’s fingers. It’s terrifying and brilliant and the most perfect thing you’ve ever felt, and it goes on and on, long slow rolling waves like the hills of a roller coaster, sweeping through you while you pour yourself out on the ground between your knees.

After what feels like forever the tremors subside. You feel used up, wrung out and hung up to dry. You might actually be shaking as you wrench your head free of Eridan’s grip and tumble backward into Karkat’s lap.

Heh. The ground in front of you looks like somebody’s been gruesomely murdered. “Gross,” you manage to say. “I guess I’m a rustblood, huh.”

Eridan snickers, stumbling to his feet and going off in search of his pants. Karkat gives a little _hrumph_ in your ear. “Let nobody ever say that romance is dead,” he says. “Not when Dave Strider is around to keep it hale and hearty.”

“Sorry, babe,” you say, grateful that your stupid snark is a good excuse for you to lean back against his warm solidity. “It was good for me — was it good for you?”

You don’t think you’re fooling him, and when he says, “Shut up, nookblister,” with a little bit of a shiver in his voice and his arms warm and tight around you, he’s not fooling you either. You chuckle, looking down at yourself, and in the mess between your thighs you can also see some unmistakeable globs of sticky white.

Happiness wells up in your chest, giddy and bright. You got Karkat off — in fact, you had something remarkably like The Full Sex, with every indication that he might be interested in coming back for more. You did — _something —_ with Eridan, for crying out loud. You are going to rock the shit out of this being-an-alien business. You are a genius and a studmuffin and you deserve all the awards, all of them.

You’re also exhausted and hungry and you _still_ think you maybe have to take a leak.


	3. diamonds

The sun is going down in earnest by the time you venture out of the clearing. Karkat and Eridan are snoozing blissfully together under a tree. You’re feeling remarkably non-jealous as you leave them curled up like puppies using Eridan’s shirt as a blanket — perhaps because you’re completely fucked out and fatigued to the point of delirium, and yet weirdly keyed-up. By the sun, it’s only, what? eight o’clock? nine? You’ve lost your grip on Earth-style time, and haven’t yet acclimated to the rhythms of this brave new world. And damn, what kind of jet lag do you get from hopping universes anyway?

Enough to throw your already-fubar brain off-kilter, because you’re stumbling through the woods back toward first-landing HQ with everything going brilliant dusk-blue around you, when you smell a whole tangle of smells that stops you in your tracks.

Only one is a familiar nose-smell, a smell wrapped up in taste and breath and memory, and that’s wood-smoke, sharp-bright and fragrant. The other smells are different, seeping into your awareness in a way you can’t pinpoint. You freeze, shivering, trying to taste the air, trying to listen with your skin, trying to figure out why your troll body seems to want to run around and tear your clothes off and go to sleep all at the same time.

“Dave?”

You whirl around, and there’s a figure emerging from the dimness, blue clothes rendering it nearly invisible in the blue light. You see the low arched horns sweeping back like the fins on a Cadillac, and you say, relief sweeping through you like exhaustion, “John?”

“That’s me,” he says, coming closer. “Whatever that means now.”

He sounds so tired and confused and _unhappy_ that even though you didn’t think you had a single fuck left to give, everything still functioning inside you gives a terrible little whimper and you reach out for him. “Aww, man, you’re still my bro,” you say, catching him by the shoulders. “And a new set of headgear does absolutely zilch to change that. Bitchin’ though it may be.”

Behind his glasses, his bright eyes reflect the dusk. “I dunno,” he says miserably. “I don’t think I make a very good troll. I think I’m screwing everything up.”

“How could you be screwing everything up? We’ve been trolls for exactly six hours and thirty-seven minutes. It’s not possible to fuck up irrevocably in that amount of time.”

“Yeah, tell that to Vriska,” he says, unhappy little lines appearing between his eyebrows. “She made it pretty obvious that I was a disappointment. Just cause I didn’t want to hook up with her like five minutes after we finished the game. Bluh.”

“Wait, Vriska came on to you?”

“Ok, don’t sound so surprised, asshole,” he says, but there’s no heat behind it. “‘Coming on to me’ is putting it a bit mildly. She seemed to think it was a foregone conclusion. If we had whipped cream in the new universe, she probably would have shown up in a sprayed-on bikini.” You snort, and he scowls. “Don’t get me wrong, she’s really pretty! But God, let a guy get his bearings first, right?”

He looks so freaked that it takes the wind right out of your smartass sails. You give his shoulders a squeeze where you’re still hanging on to him. “Dude, you do what you want, and anyone who says otherwise is being an asshole,” you say. “I don’t know her as well as you do, but just because she’s pushy doesn’t mean you had to say yes.”

He gives a tired little sigh. “And I couldn’t find Karkat anywhere,” he says. “And you disappeared too.”

Guilt twists hard in your stomach.

“And everywhere I looked people were making out like crazy. What the hell has gotten into everyone? Is there some alien sex pollen flying around and I’m the only one who’s immune?”

“John—” you start uncertainly.

“It’s fine, it’s fine,” he says, rubbing at his eyes like a little kid. “I’m just a little spooked, I guess. And it doesn’t help that I can’t even tell what I want anyway. I don’t know if I’m hungry or tired or horny or what. This body is so dumb. Everything is all wrong.” His face crumples in confusion and unhappiness. “My horns hurt.”

A terrible little ache has set up shop at the base of your throat, and it radiates with the despair coming off him in waves. You don’t know what you’re doing but before you can think to stop yourself you reach up, fingertips brushing over his temple, and stroke your thumb over the frown between his eyebrows.

“Shhh,” you say.

He freezes, eyes widening, terribly bright. Oh _shit._

You do it again, firmly, smoothing out the creases, tracing the arch of his eyebrow, then the delicate skin under his eyes, up under the edge of his glasses.

He makes a startled noise, low in his throat. This suddenly seems like the most important thing you have ever done. You take his glasses carefully off his face and hook them into the collar of your shirt, then you go back to him with both hands, cupping your palms against his jawline, stroking over his cheekbones with your thumbs. “Shush,” you say, and you feel a little silly, but your voice is doing something strange and buzzy and rich with harmonics, and he melts a little bit into your hands, so you say it again: “Shush, _shoosh_.”

“Dave,” he murmurs, and his hands come up to rest hesitantly on your hips, either to pull you closer or push you away, and God, you don’t want him to push you away.

So you keep going. You lay your palms flat against his cheeks, and the tips of your fingers stroke down his sideburns. The skin under his ear where his jawline meets his throat feels fine and fragile as silk. You push your fingers into his dense wiry hair and skritch your new claws carefully against his scalp until you come to the slight swell of his hornbeds. When you rub firm circles with your fingertips flat he says _mmnnurrr_ and tugs you closer against him. The solidity of his body sets up a low warm hum along your bones, a tingle all over your skin. Then you realize you’re feeling his hands, up under the hem of your shirt, fingers curved along your ribs.

It should be weird. It should be freaking you out, and it should be freaking him out even more, and you should jump apart and make jokes and laugh at each other. But that’s not what’s happening, and the longer it goes without happening, the more you realize that you like the feeling of his hands against your skin, that the closeness of him is quieting down the internal low-grade panic that you’ve been feeling since you woke up in a body not your own.

Longer than that, really, if you’re being honest with yourself.

“Dave,” he says, voice low and querulous, “could you take off your shades?”

“Yeah,” you say, even though you have to take your hands off his horns to do it. Once your shades are hooked into your collar next to his glasses, he pulls you closer so you’re chest-to-chest, then bends his head forward so his cheek is alongside yours.

Your eyes close and you let out a sigh you didn’t realize you were holding in, and it’s maybe the most transparently needy sound you’ve ever made, but he doesn’t say a thing.

His arms are all the way around you now, rucking up your shirt, his palms pressed flat to your back. You can feel the minute movements of his fingers, and it makes you slump farther into his arms. You’ve got one hand cupped around the back of his neck and you are melting like a candle in the sun, wrapped up in the feeling of him solid and breathing and whole and yours _— yours —_

He exhales, long and slow. You breathe against the side of his neck and realize all at once that the smell that has been winding itself all through your brain, making your thoughts slow and fuzzy-thick, is coming from him. You press your nose into his skin, pushing your eyebrow ridge hard against his jawline, and it sends prickles of _yes, want more need more_ all over your body.

He presses back against you just as hard, like he wants to crawl inside your skin.

You feel like you’re drifting, like you’re floating, like you’re swimming in warm water. He rubs the side of his face against you like a cat, and you can feel the soft catch and drag of the corner of his mouth against your temple. More of that smell, that intoxicating John-sense, blooms around you.

It slowly, slowly dawns on you that you feel like you’re turned on, but instead of being turned on with your junk, you’re turned on with every part of your body _except_ your junk. All the soft and sensitive and listening places on you — the hollow of your throat, the insides of your arms, your solar plexus, all up the back of your neck and up your scalp and up into the incomprehensible heavy-dense feeling of your horns — all of you feels warm and awake and hyper-aware of him. You can feel the texture of his skin with your lips.

“Dave,” he says softly, a little slurred. You hum against his skin and he arches and shivers like he’s got goosebumps. “What are we doing?”

You pull back enough to look him in the eyes, now ringed with gold sclera, but the irises vivid blue as they ever were, bright and cloudless as the most perfect summer sky. “Dunno,” you say. “Is it ok if I like it?” Because you do like it. You like it a lot. You like it as much as you’ve liked anything in a long time, and that coming from a guy who had his first threesome not a few hours before.

He smiles in something like relief, and you see for the first time that his front fangs are oversized and flat and there’s a gap right down the center just like he’s always had. That as much as anything makes you feel like everything’s going to be okay. “Yeah,” he says softly, bowing his forehead against yours. “Yeah, I like it too.”

“I think,” you say, then you have to stop and purr for a moment because he goes exploring your hairline with the tip of his nose, and it’s not even weird. “I think this is the thing Karkat kept trying to explain. The feelingsy cuddlebros quadrant.”

John laughs softly against your skin, but his hands haven’t stopped tracing slow circles under your shirt. “Are you trying to tell me you want to be my monorail?”

“Moirail,” you correct automatically. “And yeah, what if I do?”

He pulls back and looks at you. There’s a smile playing around the corners of his mouth, but his eyes are intent and serious, and it sends a shiver straight down through you. “Then,” he says, “look out, because I’m going to tell you about _all_ my feelings.”

“Yeah?” you breathe.

“Yeah,” he says. He leans in so his mouth is right against your ear. “I’m going to cuddle you _so_ hard.”

You can feel the blush rise in your cheeks. You’re not sure anymore what’s joking and what’s sincere. “My body is ready,” you say, shooting for deadpan and missing it by a mile.

He half-tenses against you, and you feel more than hear a subsonic growl rising in his chest. He tugs his hands out from under your shirt, then sets his claws in the fabric across your shoulderblades, for all the world like he’s about to tear it straight off you—

“Dave?” comes a voice from nearby. “John? Is that you?”

You jump a little, and you watch John’s eyes go wide as he extracts his claws from your shirt. You’re both breathing fast. “Yeah, we’re here,” you call, and your voice is none too steady.

“Oh good! I was hoping I’d find you!” Picking her way toward you in the early dark is Jade. Her wide triangular dog-ear horns and the white glint of her fangs gleam in the last of the dusk-light. “Rose and I found a cave, and we’ve got food — oh! You too?”

She’s looking down at your clasped hands, which you didn’t even realize you were holding. You’re ready for John to jump away and laugh it off, but he just clears his throat and says, “Um. We. Uh.”

“John and I are getting married,” you say. “As soon as we invent Las Vegas.”

John goes _pfffftt_ and Jade breaks into a huge happy grin. “Awesome,” she says while you give John’s glasses back to him. “Come have some food. Not that there’s a lot of choice — it’s mostly deer, deer, or deer. Nepeta and Roxy took down like five of them before the herd learned they ought to be afraid of us. You should have seen them! It was pretty amazing.” While she chatters, she leads you off a little ways through the trees, toward a rocky hill. You can see the orange glow of firelight as you approach, and the campfire smell grows stronger, as well as something rich and savory that you realize all at once is the smell of cooked meat. Jade has rigged a spit over the fire, and there’s a haunch of something glistening there. Your empty stomach bypasses growling and goes straight to full-on screaming at the smell of it.

Just beyond the fire is a low dark opening into the side of the hill. “Jade?” comes a sleepy voice. “Did you find them?”

Jade scampers ahead. “Have as much as you want!” she calls over her shoulder to you before disappearing into the cave.

You and John look at each other, then John grabs the meat off the spit.

You’re starving, but you have to say something first. “Uh. John?” He makes a _hmm?_ noise at you with his mouth full. “I want to tell you, buddy — when you said you couldn’t find me earlier? I was, uh. I was kind of. Hooking up.” He looks up at you, eyes wide. “With Karkat.”

His brow furrows a little. “And Eridan,” you add hurriedly, before you lose your nerve.

He swallows hard. “Hooking up,” he says. “Like, the sexy kind?”

You blink at him. “What are we, twelve? Yeah, the sexy kind.”

He grins. “With both of them?”

Your blush floods right back up your cheeks. “Uh — yeah.”

“Dude. Score.” He actually holds out a fist to you, which you bump uncertainly, wondering what universe you have accidentally stumbled into.

“ _Score?_ That’s it?” you say, sitting down next to him. “I thought you might be jealous. All, how could you do this to me, I thought I was the only one you loved, hit the road Jack and don’t you come back. You know. The usual.” You hear the words go out and your tone doesn’t quite achieve the chill you were aiming for. Also your hands have somehow made their way to his waist, his knee. How did that happen.

He considers for a moment, then says, “But you didn’t do the cuddlebros thing with them, right?”

You frown a little. “No. Actually there was very little cuddling at all.” Which didn’t seem weird at the time, but now that you look back on it, you wonder. “Eridan and Karkles were getting pretty snuggly when I left, though. It was kind of sickening.”

John laughs and hands you the haunch of meat. “I wonder if they’re monorails too.”

You snort and bump his shoulder with yours and he bumps yours back, then he kind of goes into an implacable slow-motion bump-shift-slouch that ends with you on your ass leaning against a rock and John between your legs with his back to your stomach and his head pillowed up against your shoulder, trading off bites. The protein sates some deep need you barely realized you had, and as your belly gets full, you can feel John relaxing down against you, his back-swept horns hooked over your shoulder. He gnaws the last shreds of meat off the bone, then tosses it toward the fire, giving a satisfied sigh.

You turn your head and rub your cheek against his closest horn, and he shivers. You smile, and on an impulse you lean down and breathe warm against the darkest band of his horn where it sprouts from the mess of his hair. He makes a gravelly chirring noise, wriggling back to press himself against you, and you do it again.

In a flash he flips over to hands and knees and you suddenly find yourself with a lapful of John Egbert. He takes his glasses and your shades from where they still hang on your collar and tosses them away into the darkness.

“Hey—”

“We’ll find them in the morning,” he says, then takes your face in his hands and nuzzles against you hard, his cheekbone to yours, his brow ridge, his jaw. Your heart does a little stutter-step in your chest. His hands go up under your shirt again and you go boneless, draped back against the rock. This time he pushes the hem of your shirt up to your armpits. “This ok?” he murmurs, his mouth against the pulse-point under your jaw.

“Fuck, Jesus, yes,” you say, lifting your arms so that he can wrestle your shirt up and over your horns. “I got my cherry popped in two different quadrants already today, so why not make it three? That’s gotta be some kind of record or something. Sweet _Christ,_ John, why does that feel so good.” He’s got his arms around your waist, kneeling between your legs with his knees under your thighs, and he tugs you closer and hums against the base of your throat.

“I dunno,” he says. “It just does.”

You comb your fingers through his hair. “So you’re feeling better now?”

He pulls back an inch or two to look at you. “What do you mean?”

“From before. You were pretty down about things a few minutes ago. But you seem to have kicked that right in the ass.”

“Yeah, well.” He smiles that goddamn toothy smile. “I figured out what I want.”

Meaning you. Meaning _this._ And fucking hell, you want it too. You’re suddenly desperate for his skin on your skin so you grab two fistfuls of shirt at the back of his neck, and tug. He sits up, grinning broadly, and reaches back to pull his shirt off from behind his head—

And promptly gets tangled with his horns. You sputter helplessly with laughter while he swears and flails and gets himself caught even worse. You sit up, reaching for him. “No — fuck’s sake, just — let me—”

“Okay,” he says, muffled, while you yank the shirt up over his head, “agenda item: reevaluate shirt removal technique.”

“I can help you work on that,” you say, easing the fabric back over his horns, and okay, maybe it’s not the smoothest line ever, but he looks down at you like you’re the one in the proverbial whipped-cream bikini. You arch a little under him while heat floods your skin. He’s kneeling over you half-naked and you’re suddenly aware of the _realness_ of this, of him, with his hammer-broad shoulders and his dumb floppy hair and his eyes like clear water a mile deep.

He props himself on his hands, leaning over you, and he’s _right there_ \-- you can almost taste him. But he just stares at you, up and down. “Look at you,” he says softly. “Has anyone told you yet how much ass you kicked during the game? Because you kicked so much ass.”

It’s out of left field and you blink a little at him, startled. He scoots in closer, ducks his head to rub his lips over your left collarbone, and your head drops back. “I saw what you did toward the end there,” he says against your skin. “During the last battle, when you made a loop around Sollux and Roxy so they could finish hacking Lord English’s virus. I don’t know if anybody else saw, but I did.”

“John—”

“I saw you catch that blast,” he says quietly. “I saw you die. Just for a second. My heart nearly stopped in my chest, but then there you were alive, and the dead you was gone, not like a god-tier regeneration. You did something with the timelines.”

You swallow hard. He pulls back and looks you right in the eyes.

“And I was thinking about it, and I realized — if you did it then, you probably did it a lot, right? Earlier in the game when we were all figuring out our powers?”

You feel laid bare before him, obliquely embarrassed — nobody was really supposed to know, least of all him.

“How many times did you die?” he asks softly, point-blank.

Your voice doesn’t quite work at first, but then you creak out, “I lost count. Couple dozen. Maybe.”

John’s eyebrows go up and in and something inside you cracks open. “That sucks,” he says succinctly.

“Yeah,” you say, shaky. It did suck, every single time. It _does._

“I know you were protecting us all,” he says, sinking down against you so you’re skin-to-skin. You can barely breathe. “But you know you’re not expendable, right? Because you’re not. You don’t have to sacrifice yourself anymore. Not ever.”

The crack in your chest yawns into an abyss. You’re going to fall. You clutch at John’s shoulders, suddenly disoriented. He turns his head and his lips glance across your cheekbone. “We did it,” he says. “We’re all here and we’re safe. You did so well.”

You feel like your atoms are trying to spin apart. You bury your face in his shoulder, and he carefully kisses the bits of you he can reach, your forehead, your temple, the base of your horn. “Shhh,” he says, cupping the back of your head in his hand. “It’s ok. We did it. We got through and we can rest now.”

 _Lay your arms down_ , the words come to you from a universe away and a lifetime ago. _Your vigil is ended._ You close your eyes, and lay everything down.

The cool solid strength of him is like an anchor for the whole world. He holds you, and you cling to him, and there is no cresting, no tension, no intolerable climb toward an unattainable release. Only calm water and clear skies. Only him, and the night silence, and the flicker of the dying fire.

Everything in you goes quiet, and you let go of time.

You don’t know how long you stay like that, while you breathe in the circle of his arms. It hardly seems to matter. But when the time is right and not a moment sooner, you hear a voice, soft and low, from the dark opening in the rocks.

“Dave? John?”

John sits up slowly, and you watch his face while he looks up, before looking up yourself. There in the opening to the cave is Rose, a smudge of paler darkness against the black.

“Come inside,” she says. “We made a pile here. There’s room for all of us.”

She disappears into the cave. Wordless, John helps you up. You are trembling with exhaustion, legs wobbly as a fawn’s, but you climb together to the opening of the cave, duck your heads and step inside.

The smells wash over you: sleep, breathing, warmth, and their skin, spicy and heady and rich and dark. Safety and sanctuary. Family. You blink in the darkness and your troll night-vision shows you Rose and Jade, curled in a pile of leaves and twigs and cast-off clothes. The bond you feel with John opens and expands and circles wide to include them. _Yes, and yes, and yes._

You are shucking off your pants and underwear before you even register what you’re doing, fully innocent and instinctive. John does the same. Jade shifts to accommodate you when you crawl into the pile beside her. You pillow your head on her shoulder while John curls up behind you, his subsonic purr thrumming through his chest and into your back. Rose finds your hand and laces her fingers with yours. The feeling of their skin shuts down the last traces of conscious thought in your mind.

You close your eyes, and you’re home.


End file.
